Hacker News Reader

This story should be more about Google's ranking code than a none story about JC Penny paying a SEO company, who did their job.

Matt_Cutts, people pay 3rd partys to "get me to the top for xx" when they deliver, you penalize then into oblivion?

View on HN

Yes, Google does generally penalize that behavior, if the SEO companies cheat. Do what JC Penney apparently did -- use a load of unrelated sites to artificially boost its standing in search results -- and Google has a good reason to penalize you. Google can only stay trustworthy (and therefore relevant) if it eschews results like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com